Hot Dish: Tengda Asian Bistro

Sammie and George Li  Amy Sowder Photos

New to the menu dishes: spicy paradise sushi roll above and shaking steak, below. 

By AMY SOWDER

Red-hot flames licked the air 3-feet above a cook’s gloved hand as he tossed tender, meaty morsels glistening with butter into a wok. 

In the steamy and frenetic kitchen, fiery tongues of flame erupted and disappeared at lightning speed. They engulfed the browning ribeye chunks in shapeshifting explosions of orange and red.

In the cool dining room’s open-air sushi bar, another chef slices the chilly, firm filets of salmon and yellowtail with practiced precision and efficiency.

Tengda Asian Bistro in Katonah is a restaurant of contrasts.

Guests come for both the cool sushi rolls and hot Tengda specials and entrees almost equally, said husband-and-wife owners George and Sammie Li.

“About 70% of our guests are regulars. Some come in twice a week. In Katonah, it’s a small neighborhood. Everyone knows everyone, and we enjoy that. They’ve become our family over the years,” said Sammie, who runs front-of-house operations. The dining room has modern-industrial accents, original artwork from artists from the Katonah Museum of Art and a crystal chandelier. Her husband handles the kitchen.

After the 68-seat restaurant opened in 2007, they both worked as employees — George as sushi chef and Sammie as server, host and cashier. Then, the couple bought the restaurant in 2011 and became hands-on owners. Tengda means “great future and prosperity” in Mandarin.

These days, they update the menu every one or two years, adding the most popular specials and dropping the least popular menu items.

Emerging each from their own kitchen, the “shaking steak” and the “spicy paradise roll” are new to the menu in the last month.

The cubed ribeye steak dish is simple — meat and salad — but lands on the palate with surprising savory depth, even more than expected for a hunk of beef. “We marinate the steak in oyster sauce,” George said. 

Also, there’s that deceivingly simple-looking dipping bowl between the crisp mixed greens, cucumbers and grape tomatoes. It’s sweet rice wine vinegar and fish sauce infused with garlic. All that, plus the periodic pats of butter in the explosive wok-frying process add up to something much more umami than the sum of its parts.

“I’ve been working in restaurants all my life, and it’s all about quality,” George said.

Buying top-quality, super-fresh fish is key to good sushi, he said. That goal requires expertise at managing inventory: ordering enough seafood to fulfill all the day’s orders, but not so much that some fish remain in stock after 24 hours. Translation: smaller orders, more often.

“You have to manage your inventory well to keep things fresh,” Sammie said. 

George nodded. “That’s most important.”

The term “sushi grade” is an unregulated marketing term on fish labels. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn’t grade fish like it grades the marbling in beef. But the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets did adopt the FDA’s guidelines as law on the safety of fish sold for raw consumption. Basically, any wild fish besides tuna species — which includes bigeye, bluefin, yellowfin, bonito/skipjack — requires specific freezing times and temperatures to kill parasites. Unlike home freezers, Japanese and Asian-fusion restaurants have commercial freezers for the job.

“Raw fish is not for everybody, but it’s become more and more mainstream over the years,” George said. “You have to pick the right fish and know how to prepare it.” For instance, George and his chefs salt their salmon before freezing it to enhance the flavor and texture.

The spicy paradise roll includes three kinds of fish: a spicy tuna that’s ground with chili-spiced mayo, and slices of salmon and yellowtail are draped across the top of the roll.

At the sushi bar, chef Paul Ni crafted that new-to-the-menu roll, with a wheel of pineapple, and long sticks of fresh jalapeño and a drizzle of Thai sweet chili sauce.

He used a sushi roller that looks like a mini bamboo mat, and plastic wrap to shape and mold the roll multiple times before slicing. A couple of rice cookers stood behind him, for easy scooping access.

The result is a burst of fruity sweetness, a mild touch of buttery richness from the fish and a spicy zing from three directions to round it out. 

And notice that there’s no seaweed wrap on this roll.

“This roll has a soybean sheet,” said George, pointing to the light-pink wrap encasing the rice, fresh produce and seafood. “It’s very soft. Some people don’t like the chewiness of seaweed, so we sell this a lot.” 

Tengda Asian Bistro is located at 286 Katonah Ave., Katonah. For more information, visit tengdakatonah.com.